Madre

As quirky and original as you'd expect from the South Koreans. MOTHER is a lengthy mystery film featuring an unusual storyline about a mother who seeks justice for her unfairly imprisoned son. Along the way, there's all the kind of bizarre supporting characters, atypical incident and genuinely surprising plot twists that you'd expect from a Korean film. This is a movie that keeps you watching throughout despite the slow pacing and lack of action.

The character development is excellent: fully natural, low key throughout, and thoroughly involving. Unsurprisingly, the actors selected to pay the various characters are just right for the part, particularly Hye-ja Kim who we only ever know as 'mother'. She's a unique choice of lead and fits the role perfectly. Won Bin, who made an excellent action hero in THE MAN FROM NOWHERE, is equally excellent here as the slow-witted son and he really gets his teeth into the part.

MOTHER may be a slow burner of a film, but it has a subtle way of truly involving the viewer in the storyline. The tension builds as the climax nears, and then the movie hits you with some moments of quiet devastation that prove a shock to the core. Fans expecting another pulse-pounding thriller like THE YELLOW SEA may be disappointed, but those with open minds will have a ball.

Bong manages to capture some of the poignancy of motherhood in his film Mother, which concerns an elderly single mother (played by Hye-ja Kim) and her son Yoon Do-joon (played by Bin Won). Do-joon is mentally disabled, he has a low intelligence and seems to have problems with his memory. His mother is absolutely devoted to her son. Bong throws light on that extraordinary capacity of some women to totally subjugate their own lives to those of their children, who live for the pep that they get seeing often unappreciative family members troughing their way through their latest offering.

Do-joon is framed up fairly early on by the police for a murder that they can't really be bothered to investigate thoroughly. So mum is on the case, you'd better believe it! This involves for example bringing in drinks for all the members of the detective bureau on a visit to the precinct. There's a lot of tragedy in the movie, but it's offset by a comedy that is at times is almost outrageous in it's manipulativeness, Bong's really being directly provocative at times (though not in a salacious sense)! There's a grand surreal scene at one point where he convinces you that a very minor character is going to perform a deeply uncanny suicide, and then something totally banal happens instead. One of my favourite scenes is a scene on a golf course where a shot dollys across to some action taking place in sugar-white bunkers, which would not be out of place in a Fellini movie.

Bong was playing with my emotions throughout, he set up affiliations between me and other characters only to subvert them or rebuild them later, he builds scenes to emotional explosiveness just for the sake of it. The film leaves you emotionally confused at times, Bong's smashing all the buttons on the telephone, and so you don't really know what number is being dialled. The effect is deliberate.

Bottom line I think it's a celebration of motherhood, but it's not sugar-coated, it's really warts and all. Congratulations Mr Bong!

It's too bad that because this film is ostensibly about an old lady it must be considered a "smaller" film in Bong's oeuvre. It's not. It is every bit as brilliant, and as large, as Memories of Murder, in my opinion.

In many ways this is the natural, and equal, follow-up to Memories of Murder. It's every bit the caper film that one was, and, although slightly more somber in tone, the film keeps unraveling in directions you don't expect making it much more a plot driven movie than a character study. Kim Hye-ja is, however, magnificent as the titular (gawd I hate that word but I'm using it anyway) mother. There is a scene in this film where she tells the family of the victim her son didn't do it and her eyes are so electrically charged it made me jump back from the screen. Mother fires on all cylinders. The direction, cinematography, script, and acting are all grade A. It's one of those films where each of the secondary characters steals the show for a brief period. (How 'bout that cop who kicks the apple from Won Bin's mouth?) Bong does a remarkable job of populating the world of this film with real people and manages to give them depth and development in a very short period of time. I confess to having a little trouble tracking the other female characters in the film, but no matter. There is a scene (without spoiling anything here) where Kim Hye-ja asks the other 'retarded' kid if he has a mother and it's one of the most complex and heart-rending scenes in cinematic history. Hyperbole notwithstanding, just freakin' WOW! on that one when you ponder just why she is crying.

I wasn't sure where Bong was going to end up going as a film maker. Barking Dogs Never Bite was a reasonable debut. Memories of Murder, a masterpiece. But was it a lucky shot? I'm glad I don't have to consider the dismal Antarctic Journal a Bong film if I don't want to. The Host was lots-o-fun, but that's the one that worried me. Maybe he was going to start making blockbuster type films. But now, after recently seeing his contribution to Tokyo!, and now Mother, I have every reason to believe he is going to kick my butt with interesting film for a long time.

In a province in Pusan, South Korea, the slow Yoon Do-joon (Bin Won) is a young man overprotected by his mother (Hye-ja Kim) that works with acupuncture and herbs and does not like his worthless and reckless friend Jin-tae (Goo Jin). When a Mercedes runs over Do-joon, Jin-tae follows the hit-and-run driver with Do-joon and find the car parked in a golf club. Jin-tae breaks the side mirror of the car and Do-joon collects golf balls lost in a lake. When they see the cart with the driver and passengers of the Mercedes, there is a fight and they end in the police station. During the night, Do-joon walks to the bar Manhattan to meet Jin-tae that does not arrive; when Do-joon returns home, he sees the easy Moon Ah-jung (Mun-hee Na) walking alone in an alley and entering in an abandoned house. On the next morning, Ah-jung is found dead on the terrace of the house. The incompetent detectives find a golf ball near her body and they conclude that Do-joon is the killer. Doo- joon is arrested; signs a confession and is charged of murder. However, his mother follows her instincts believing that her son is innocent and the scapegoat of the incompetent police department and seeks the truth disclosing a dreadful reality.

"Madeo" is an original and dramatic South Korean thriller that has an engaging story with a surprising plot point and many twists. The director Joon-ho Bong of "Gwoemul" makes a simple but effective film with a credible story of a single woman that does everything possible and impossible to prove the innocence of her son that is slow probably because he was poisoned when he was five. The performance of Hye-ja Kim deserves a nomination to the Oscar in the role of a dedicated loving mother that pursues the truth about the murder of a teenager student. With the exception of one review of a user that probably has difficulties to read subtitles; the nine wins, six nominations and the favorable reviews of twenty-three IMDb users are practically an unanimous indication that "Madeo" is a great film indeed. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "Mother - A Busca Pela Verdade" ("Mother – Seeking the Truth")

Bong Joon-ho's new film is built around actors. The starting point of it is Kim Hye-ja, 'grande dame' of Korean acting (around whom the screenplay by Bong and Park Eun-kyo is built), who gets a chance to break away from the long-suffering, boundlessly loving mother image she maintains in the long-running "Rustic Diary" TV series to embrace a juicier, darker, richer role. Likewise Won Bin, whose pretty-boy looks have gotten him gangster and perfect son casting, here becomes the slack-jawed, unpredictable Do-joon, a "retard," not taken seriously by most of the town, but zealously protected by his apothecary mom (Kim), who even sleeps in the same bed with him, though he's 27. Both the mother's and son's roles are challenging. Kim Hye-ja shows an incredible emotional range within a de-glamorized exterior, and Won Bin subtly side-steps dumb-guy shtick, managing to keep Do-joon lastingly unpredictable and mysterious.

Do-joon has a run-in with the police after he and his friend Jin-tae (Jin Gu) hassle some fat cats at the golf club after one of them hits Do-joon with his Mercedes and doesn't stop. Simple Do-joon brags about being at the police station, but then gets drunk, brooding about the way Jin-tae ribs him for being a virgin and wanting to get laid. Then that same night Ah-jong, a schoolgirl, is found with her head bashed in and Do-joon becomes the prime suspect. His case seems hopeless, but his aging mother, convinced that Do-joon would never hurt a fly, takes it upon herself to conduct her own investigation of the case, which neither the cops nor the fancy lawyer she has engaged are interested in. This story carries its mother-son relationship well beyond the usual. There is no extent to which this mom won't go to protect and exonerate her son, and some of the memories that are dredged up are troubling indeed.

In some aspects 'Mother' reaches back to Bong's 2003 '80's-set police procedural 'Memories of Murder,' particularly to its sensitive development of a small-town milieu. But this film is also full of comic aspects like the director's later international success 'The Host' (2006, also a NYFf selection). The focus on mysterious, isolated people relates to the main character in Bong's top-drawer segment of the 2008 'Tokyo!' trilogy, "Shaking Tokyo." Cell phone cameras, autographed golf balls, and acupuncture also play key roles in the story, which is full of interesting twists and turns. A major turnaround comes from Do-joon's bad-boy friend Jin-tae, whose true role we have no idea of at first.

Bong explodes the image of the ideal mother and as usual, bends genres in this new effort. At times this might seem a twisted psychological thriller with links to Douglas Sirk and Sam Fuller, and the occasionally old-fashioned movie music by Lee Byeong-woo, traditionally surging at key points, reinforces that impression. Ryu Seong-hie, the production designer, has worked extensively with Park Chan-wook, and d.p. Hong Gyeong-pyo does a superb job in integrating the looks of a wide variety of locations. This is highly sophisticated Korean cinema at its technical best.

We can't possibly reveal the outcome: the essence of 'Mother' is that its plot is packed with surprises. Perhaps indeed there are a few too many: the last ten minutes introduce further twists after the surprise climax that might better have been omitted. For all the great look, terrific acting, and explosive plot twists, I'm not sure this is up to the best of Bong Joon-ho's previous work. It's fun and entertaining especially at the outset and watchable throughout, but Bong and Park's screenplay meanders a bit. The film's inclusion in the 2009 New York Film Festival may owe more to timing, to the bloom that's still upon Korean cinema, and to Bong's status as an alumnus of the festival, than to the film's intrinsic merit. (Hong Sang-soo, a NYFF favorite, despite a new film that's received raves, is omitted this year. His 2008 NYFF Paris-based entry was somewhat lackluster. . .)

Bong's 'Mother'/'Madeo' was included in the "Un Certain Regard" series at Cannes, and shown as part of the New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center 2009.

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